French Navy to replace radar with live Strava leaderboard around aircraft carrier

PARIS, March 21 – The French Navy will begin phasing out certain radar monitoring functions aboard its flagship aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle in favor of a persistent Strava-based activity leaderboard, the French Ministry of Armed Forces said on Thursday.

“Traditional radar gives you range and bearing, but not split times.”

The move follows an internal inquiry into a December incident in which a junior officer inadvertently disclosed the vessel’s exact position, course and morning stretching routine by publicly logging a 7.3 km run around the flight deck.

Under the new system, movements of personnel on and around the carrier will be tracked and visualized in real time through a “Maritime Operational Leaderboard Environment” (MOLE), a customized fork of Strava’s fitness platform, according to a 47-page ministry directive seen by reporters.

The directive describes MOLE as a “dual-use maritime awareness solution” that will allow commanders to “detect nearby threats, benchmark crew cardio performance, and optimize influencer engagement metrics” using the same data feed.

A navy spokesperson said the Charles de Gaulle will serve as the first testbed for the technology, with 612 connected devices to be issued to sailors, pilots and select munitions.

“Traditional radar gives you range and bearing, but not split times,” the spokesperson said, adding that the system will flag any unidentified vessel within a 200-nautical-mile radius that fails to log at least 10,000 steps per day.

Strava confirmed it is working with the French Navy on what it called “the world’s first carrier strike fitness cloud,” integrating heatmaps, segment leaderboards and a new “Hostile Contact PR” badge into the ship’s combat information center.

A Strava product manager, speaking on condition of anonymity because the feature is still in beta, said the platform already supports over 3.7 million “ocean-adjacent” activities and expects a 480% increase in “classified jog” uploads once the program is fully deployed.

Analysts at Thales, which currently supplies radar systems to the French fleet, said the initiative reflects a “broader shift toward consumerized battlespace awareness,” noting that a single Strava heatmap can now display more geo-intelligence than “nine legacy coastal radar sites and an admiral with binoculars.”

One internal Thales briefing warned that conventional radars may become “functionally indistinguishable from outdated step counters” if they cannot provide social sharing, personal bests and weekly motivation emails.

According to an internal Navy memo, the new policy will require all embarked personnel to join carrier-specific Strava “clubs” sorted by unit, with squadron readiness scores partially tied to collective monthly elevation gain.

The same memo outlines a red-amber-green threat scale based on the appearance of unknown profiles titled “Russian Cruiser,” “PLA Research Vessel” or “Suspicious Kayak” within 5 km of any French hull.

To address security concerns, officials said the Ministry has adopted a “classified privacy zone” feature that automatically blurs sensitive locations such as nuclear reactors, weapons magazines and the ship’s dessert buffet, replacing them with anodyne labels like “Wellness Area” and “Mindfulness Loop.”

The defense ministry added that GPS coordinates will be rounded to the nearest 17 nautical miles and timestamps obfuscated by inserting a random “yoga cool-down” segment at the end of every patrol.

In a written statement, the Ministry of Armed Forces said the integration of MOLE on the Charles de Gaulle will be completed by Q4 2025, with trials to follow on six frigates, three submarines and one landlocked recruiting office.

If successful, officials said, NATO partners will be invited to participate in a joint “North Atlantic Step Challenge” intended to replace at least two major naval exercises and one classified surveillance program by 2028.